Hi friends,
Everything is growing so fast and lusciously with all this rain that I simply can't keep up with it. Ben has a busy July coming up because he picked up more new clients. Tonight at 6pm is the second income tax deadline, this one for self-
employed people, so he has been working even harder than usual lately. He worked last night and this morning at home and then went to the office where he's finishing up. There are a few taxes to deliver for signatures, (which he does for
a few people,) and then he'll take them all to the tax office and everything will be in on time. Whew!
Nevertheless, with the busy July he will be able to do a few things around here
that have piled up this spring, but nothing like what needs to be done; so he sent me a woman gardener. I don't like having strange men around the house when he isn't home.
Shirley said she'd come between l0 and 12, and it turned out that she came aboutnoon so I invited her to have lunch with me and we got to know each other.
She is exactly the kind of person I need. :-)))
I don't like to kill anything that deserves to live, even if people call it a bug or a weed. There is room here for a certain number of weeds and plenty of good bugs. Bad bugs are needed to feed the good ones. So I am very careful about
working with our half acre to allow it to develop according to the shape of the
land and partly the way it self seeds. That means that the person who helps to
care for it needs to have a similar approach toward nature. They just can't come in here with a weed-eater or big clippers and start cutting everything off, or
shaping bushes into round balls.
Shirley's a lot like I am, actually. Enthusiastic, focussed, ethical, thinks things through, and committed to living a worthwhile life, and she understandsnature from her heart. It turned out that she's a status Indian and she's enough like me in manner and looks to be my first cousin. In fact, I have first cousins who look less like me and act less like me than she does.
We went over everything that grows here, and it's plain to me that she understands our direction. There are wild plants and bushes I want to keep. It's interesting what will spring up if you give the land a chance. This year I found that
we have a good wild blackberry bush. We've had a beautiful Saskatoon berry bushfor a long time. Our wild roses are in wonderful bloom. There is tansy, and
violets and Oregon Grape and tall Mulleins with very soft, fuzzy leaves that Native people used to use for diapers. It can also be made into a chest poultice.
She knows about these things, and so do I because I think it's important to know what the wild plants can do in case of need, and I've studied it. She knows because the knowledge has been passed down to her. I think I probably have a new
friend as well as a gardener. She'll come about once a month, but will work for the full day.
She uses industrial strength vinegar in hot sunshine when she needs to eradicatesome plants. We had a very interesting and good time together. I can see by her build, body language and way that she is a steady and quick worker and I feelconfident about letting her decide how to proceed.
Once again, it is cloudy. We have had rain almost every day in June. Much in May, too. Ben is convinced that Oregon weather has moved northward. Evidently there is a shift north in a couple of fundamental world systems and this is to be
expected. For an area that is supposed to be a semi-desert there sure *is* a lot of rain this year! We still get snow in the mountains, but if that changes I
guess we'll need to build more reservoirs instead of the snow melting slowly andacting as its own reservoir. This year some of the local creeks are going to flood. Shirley's house is up high enough that it won't be flooded. We simply never get flooded on our mountain. Fires are another thing....Maybe the fire breaks from the last fire will keep fires a long way from here for quite some time to come....But flying embers can travel miles in a firestorm. They flew all the way across the lake last time. Ben and I want to change our roof from a wooden cedar shingle roof to one that is fireproof. Maybe this year.
Now I'm going to go to pack up some books for our youngest grandchildren.
With friendly greetings to all of you, Mary, in Canada.
